Windows 10: Update 1803 failed - leaves laptop machine unusable

Anonymous

Hi,

Spent all day yesterday trying to recover from a failed update on a 64bit Lenovo laptop that was completely up to date before starting the upgrade to 1803 a couple of days ago. I left the upgrade working overnight. Here's the screen after I enter my login, password and wait some time for the system to load..

No icons from my applications, no wireless, cannot even access the 'Start' menu or Search! I have looked through many websites and pages but no-one else seems to have had this issue....

I started exploring my laptop... The only way I could get the laptop to reboot was to use 'Ctrl-Alt-Del' to bring up the Task Menu, then there is a 'Restart' button bottom right. No Windows services were running.

Upon restarting, I cannot access the recovery menu... nothing worked... tried all function buttons, Shift key and Windows key combinations etc. Can't recall exactly how I did it now - but trying to recover, I get to:-

then:

Tried them all but no change in the final outcome.... and keep coming back to:

None of the options work to install the windows update.

Thinking I might be able to get the wifi working to continue the update download, I use Task Manager to start lots of services, not really knowing what I am doing.. but I get the wifi icon in the task bar, but cannot find a way to see the accessible wifi networks or log onto them... After working all day on this, I leave the machine running overnight as I appear to have triggered an update - at least the message read's Getting my machine ready! In the morning, I see:

Click 'OK' and back where I started.

So more research... already a couple of unproductive days invested.... and came across a website and started to read .. and read...

Used Powershell to access diskpart and came up with this:

I did find that my files are located in Drive E:/[user]/my documents and that the version of Windows installed is 10.0.17134.1

Accessing c: (Volume 1) there is [EFI] and a recovery.text file with no content (0 bytes).

Arrived at a point where doing something with Diskpart might really mess the system up... if that is possible! Can anyone/someone help me out of this? I have downloaded a new Windows 10 ISO to a USB drive but don't want to clean install and lose my files or applications - lots of which I no longer have the CD's for!... and no backups.

I fell into the trap of having three computers, two of which updated ok and felt somewhat reassured to update the third... Hoping...

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54 answers

Anonymous

2018-05-15T21:48:58+00:00

Oh, great, so your solution was to wipe the hard drive and start over.

Thanks, Microsoft!

I'll keep trying for a few days.
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Anonymous

2018-05-15T15:16:41+00:00

Hi there,

After several days of trying.... spending an inordinate amount of time and being unproductive, I finally gave up trying to rescue the system and files I had on the Lenovo. I did, fortunately have a back-up of the files and the original installation CD's of applications I needed... so I went back to square one... first I found and made a note of the Windows key, formatted the hard drive, merged all of the partitions into one and installed Windows 10 from a USB drive and now everything is working.

The uncalled for update broke my laptop and has caused me frustration and lost income and I feel very aggrieved. At the very least, each update should be accompanied by a way of backing up the current set-up which runs before the updated system warns that a reboot is necessary.

Isn't it ironic that the advice above contained a suggestion that I install Ubuntu (Linux) to resolve the issue? I need to investigate that system software more.. at least with that I can run it without updating!

My wife has a Chromebook and has never had a problem with that.... just may need to go to that system!

Thanks to everyone who contributed.

Allan
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Anonymous

2018-05-15T14:05:55+00:00

From what I can tell is you have an older, Legacy install. The System Reserved partition is only 200 MB, which is really too small for Win 10.

It is possible, because the upgrade could not set the drive up to make it usable, the upgrade process was corrupted. If it was corrupted, no way to know the status of your personal data. There might be a Windows.old folder which contains your Data.

Did you create any recovery media before you started the upgrade?

When you start your system, you should be able to get a Boot device menu. If you can, what devices does it show? If it were to have a rollback option, you might try that.

If you can't get it to boot so you can access your data, you might think about using a Live version of Ubuntu to boot but not install. It might allow you to copy off personal data.

If you could get your data, then you might do a clean install. The data in the Lenovo partitions is probably not available for Win 10, but that is something you and Lenovo need to discuss.
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Anonymous

2018-05-15T13:30:03+00:00

Hi ErwinJames San,

I am having exactly the same problem as Thompa, and could send the same screenshots. My computer is a DELL desktop, not a Lenovo, and has been running Windows 10 fine until last night, when the update destroyed it.

After hours of struggle, I was able to log on to my main account and my backup account. However, all of my personal files seem to have been erased! The symptoms are highly erratic: When I log onto my main account, the various applications that usually start on login start ok. But the internet connection doesn't work. I can browse the filesystem starting from C:, and most of the folder tree seems to be there, but most of the files are gone.

This is really, really frustrating -- updates from Microsoft are not supposed to destroy your computer and erase your files and cost you harrowing hours & hours trying to recover. Just sayin'

What do you suggest? I will be happy to provide any other system information you need.

Thanks,

Judd
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Anonymous

2018-05-12T23:02:15+00:00

Thank you for getting in touch with me. That being said, I would suggest for you to perform a repair upgrade on your computer. This is to ensure that your personal files would still be intact upon performing this step.

Please don't hesitate to keep me posted with the results.
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